Editor

Background Indexing

The indexes and indexing infrastructure were rewritten to use transactions. The project scanning and up to date check do not block editor features nor navigation. These features see the previous committed index. Also the write transaction are suspended by read transactions, so the background indexing has lower priority than user actions.

Parallel Indexers

The binary indexers run in parallel which makes indexing of java project faster.

Projects

Main Project

The "main project" GUI has been largely removed; no main project will be set by default when creating or opening projects. Users who wish to set a main project, mainly for the benefit of global toolbar buttons and corresponding keyboard accelerators, may still do so via the Run > Set Main Project submenu.

Project Actions

Project-wide actions, such as Clean & Build, may now be run when multiple projects are selected.

The buttons for such actions are also disabled while running, to guard against accidentally building the same project twice in parallel due to "mouse bounce".

For convenience, Run > Repeat Build/Run is now bound to Ctrl-F11 by default.

Import/Export ZIP

New items under the File menu let you save a project (or tree of projects) as a ZIP file - excluding build products - and conversely unpack a ZIP and open any projects found inside.

Collapse All

The blank area in the Projects and Files tab now has a context menu item to collapse all nodes.

Java

Package View

You can now view Java packages in "reduced tree" mode.
(A third option in the submenu available when right-clicking the empty space in the Projects tab.)
This mode differs from plain "tree" mode in that multiple package components with no other children (for example "com.mycorp.mydept") are collapsed into one node for easier navigation.

Improved Java Beans Support

Code Generation

You can now customize order of the generated class members via a new panel added to 'Tools -> Options -> Editor -> Formatting -> Java'.

Remove Surrounding Code

Now you can quickly remove the enclosing parts of a nested statement by placing the caret on the particular statement and invoking the 'Source > Remove Surrounding Code' action from the main menu or by pressing 'Alt+Delete'. A pop-up window is shown displaying all the surrounding statement parts that are available and can be removed in the current context.

Move Code Element Up and Down

Now you can quickly move entire code elements (statements and class members) up
or down using the 'Source > Move Code Element Up/Down' actions from the main menu or by pressing 'Alt+Shift+PageUp/Alt+Shift+PageDown'.

Hints

Generate Implementing/Extending Class

When you put the cursor in a class declaration header, a new hint should appear.

or

When the hint is invoked, the new class, with all its required methods, is automatically generated, as a separate class (a dialog pops up letting you specify the name of the class and the package where the class should be created).

Ant

Bundled version

The bundled version of Ant was upgraded to 1.8.3.

Command-line equivalent

When running an Ant process, the closest equivalent command line is displayed at the top of the Output Window for convenience.

Debug target

You can now run the Ant debugger from the context menu of a target node.

Maven

Bundled version

The bundled version of Maven was upgraded to 3.0.4.

Compile on Save

Compile on Save is now on by default for application execution. This means that Java classes produced by the IDE's background parser can be used to make Run Project much faster. If you prefer to use exec-maven-plugin to run programs (slower but more flexible), adjust your preferences in the Compile tab of project properties.

("Deploy on Save", in the Run tab, was already enabled by default for Java EE application projects in which Compile on Save was also enabled.)

Compile on Save is off by default for running (single) tests, since many users were confused by behavioral differences from certain configurations of maven-surefire-plugin. Now Test File always runs Maven by default, just like Test Project, though you may reenable Compile on Save for tests if you prefer its speed and it works on your project.

Repository browser

The list of repositories has been moved under the Services tab rather than needing its own window.

The actions available on artifact version nodes has been expanded and made more consistent, notably including the ability to download sources and Javadoc.

Quick Search hits for Maven artifacts now select the version node here, rather than opening the multiview. You can still open the multiview by double-clicking the node if you want.

The multiview now includes a tab displaying the text of the POM.

Dependency display

Non-classpath dependencies are now shown under their own nodes.

Show Dependency Graph has been replaced with Open POM; the graph is shown as a tab in the pom.xml editor window.

New archetype wizard

The wizard panel for selecting an archetype (to create a new project) has been rewritten and now features a search field.

Source/Javadoc attachment

Automatic attachment of Source/Javadoc will now search the Maven repository for matches if your binary JAR is identical to one in the Maven repository, even if it is somewhere else on disk (say, in a library directory of an Ant-based project).

Plugin handling

<annotationProcessors> from maven-compiler-plugin is now considered by the Java editor.

POM editor

Expressions in POM files allow hyperlinks, jumping to the location in current or parent file where the property is defined. Works both for the ${foo} and ${project.foo} expressions. While hyperlink the action, the tooltip shows the value of the expression as it resolves in the current project.

Scanning performance

Scanning large Maven projects, especially those with many binary dependencies, is faster than in 7.1.

Hudson

View config.xml

A new action on a job lets you view its raw configuration data quickly.

Quick-search provider

You can now jump to the node for a Hudson job from the Quick Search toolbar.

Java EE

JPA Support

JPQL and named queries support

JPQL validation is added for named queries.

JPQL completion support is added, supported for "query" attribute of NamedQuery annotation and withing createQuery("") method.

Named query name is linked to named query declaration if used in "createNamedQuery".

Named query name code completion is added to createNamedQuery method

Generation options

New mapping options are added for entities from database:

'Use defaults if possible' is used to use fewer annotations in generated code and 'Generate fields for unresolved relationships' is used to generate usual fields if relationship can't be coded (for example opposite side of relationship isn't generated or mossed for any other reason).

Persistence.xml

Properties completion is added to persistence.xml, main support is provided for ecipselink jpa 2.0 provider. Support jdbc url value completion.

CDI Warnings for non-portable behavior

Amazon Beanstalk support

Register your Amazon Beanstalk account in the IDE and deploy your Web Applications directly to Amazon cloud. There is new Cloud node in Services panel where your cloud accounts can be registered. Right click the node and start wizard for Amazon Beanstalk:

If you are creating a new Web Application, which is going to be deployed to Amazon Beanstalk, the IDE can setup everything necessary. Just follow "Add Server" wizard and name your Amazon Beanstalk application and environment:

which will result into new environment creation on Amazon Beanstalk:

Once that's finished you can just press F6 on your project to build it, deploy it and open it in browser:

Java FX

Project Auto-Update

On opening a JavaFX 2.0+ project from older NB version in newer NB version the project build scripts are auto-updated to ensure correct functionality.

Editor

CSS code completion for FX-specific elements.

FXML goto support for Java Controller and CSS file.

Templates

New FXML File Templates including creation of Java Controller and CSS file.

Version Control

Search History redesigned

Search history view in Git, Mercurial and Subversion version control systems is now more intuitive and individual revisions are easier to inspect.

Mercurial

Queues support

The IDE now supports Mercurial Queues, you can now create, refresh and finish patches, switch between individual patches in a queue and review patch diffs directly from the IDE.

Debugger

Breakpoints have a possibility to enable/disable other breakpoints when hit

Breakpoint Properties have two new options ("Enable Group" and "Disable Group"), that allow to specify a name of a group containing breakpoints, that are enabled or disabled, when the breakpoint is hit.

Source scanning does not block debugger stepping

Stepping through the source code is no longer blocked by source scanning task. The step was analyzing where specifically is the program suspended on the given line. Now this analysis does not prevent from issuing a next step.

Zoom of the debugger GUI snapshot

The GUI snapshot of an application created under a debugger, can be zoomed to fit comfortably into the window area.

ApiGen

Neon

Apache Config file

New Hints

Groovy

Groovy version

Currently we have updated the Groovy version from 1.6.4 to 1.9-beta-4. At the moment it's not possible to tell if Groovy 2.0-final will be released before NetBeans IDE 7.2. If it is, we will try to integrate Groovy 2.0-final to the NetBeans IDE 7.2 release. Otherwise, we will use Groovy 1.8.6, since it is the last stable release.

Code Completion improvements

Code completion should be more reliable and accurate now - issue 151985

CamelCase code completion has been implemented and works in a similar way as for java files

Changed location of userdir and cachedir

Maven-based module development

Archetypes using the 3.7 version of the plugin are now offered.

The major feature in this version is integral support for creating installers (NBI); this goal is suggested in the application archetype in -Pdeployment. The old Ant-based context menu item "Build Installers" is available only for earlier plugin versions and is deprecated.

OSGi 4.3, Felix 4.0.2 and Equinox 3.7.1

OSGi support in the platform has been upgraded to version 4.3. Read more...